Monday, October 30, 2017

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READ: Federal grand jury indictment against Manafort, GatesCNN(CNN) Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump campaign official Rick Gates surrendered Monday to Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. Read the unsealed ...

The charges against two top officials from President Donald Trump's campaign signals a dramatic new phase of Mueller's wide-ranging investigation into possible collusion between the Russian government and members of Trump's team as well as potential obstruction of justice and financial crimes.
A White House spokesman told CNN the Trump administration "may not have a response at all" regarding the charges.
Manafort, whose work for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has attracted scrutiny from federal investigators, has previously denied financial wrongdoing regarding his Ukraine-related payments, his bank accounts in offshore tax shelters and his various real-estate transactions over the years. Gates, who has also denied wrongdoing, was Manafort's longtime business associate in his lobbying firm before being tapped as his deputy on the Trump campaign.
They are the first two officials in Trump's orbit charged in connection with the special counsel investigation, which is exploring whether Trump's actions surrounding the firing of former FBI Director James Comey amount to obstruction of justice. Mueller has taken a broad approach to his mandate that includes a focus on the financial dealings of Trump's team.

How Digital Inexperience Paid Off in the Trump CampaignCivicistHow the hell did team Trump leapfrog team Clinton in the use of social media for campaigning? The answer, I think, dates back to a digital experiment from the 2014 election, and the broader trend toward experimentally-informed campaigns. Facebook was ...

If you made a list of the factors that landed Donald Trump in the White House, Trump campaign digital director Brad Parscalewould put Facebook near the top. “Facebook now lets you get to places—and places possibly that you would never go with TV ads,” Parscale told CBS earlier this month. “Now, I can find, you know, 15 people in the Florida Panhandle that I would never buy a TV commercial for. And, we took opportunities that I think the other side didn't.” The relationship with Silicon Valley wasn’t one sided: as major tech companies face mounting criticism for allowing political disinformation to proliferate on their platforms, a new study suggests that employees at Facebook, Google, and Twitter also took on crucial roles within the Trump campaign, acting more like political strategists than on-site salespeople.
The collaboration allowed Team Trump to shore up its digital operations in a way that would have been difficult to accomplish on its own, according to Politico, which got an early look at the study. Embedded tech employees took on responsibilities such as targeting hard-to-reach voters and coming up with responses to probable lines of attack during debates. “Facebook, Twitter, and Google [went] beyond promoting their services and facilitating digital advertising buys,” the peer-reviewed paper concludes. The companies “actively [shaped] campaign communications through their close collaboration with political staffers.”
The Clinton campaign turned down the assistance, which Facebook, Google, and Twitter all offered to 2016 candidates free of charge. (One tech company employee in the study said her campaign “viewed us as vendors rather than consultants.”) The Trump campaign, on the other hand, used the “embeds” extensively during the general election. Ultimately, the work each company did for Trump—Google recommending geographically targeted ads, Twitter analyzing the success of tweet-based fundraising efforts, and Facebook identifying which pictures performed best on Instagram, for instance—helped close the gap between him and Clinton, experts cited in the study conclude.
The collaboration likely proved lucrative for all three companies. Online political-ad spending during the 2016 election totaled $1.4 billion—the Trump campaign spent $70 million on Facebook alone, making client services a valuable extension of Facebook’s ad product. The collaboration also conferred additional benefits, as Politico points out: national exposure, a testing ground for new features and products, and the chance to build a relationship with a candidate who might end up holding the regulatory reins once in office.
In the wake of Trump’s victory, Silicon Valley is facing difficult questions about that symbiotic relationship, and a potential regulatory reckoning. It also underscores a nearly universal truth about how the tech and media industries treated the 2016 presidential race: employees at Facebook and Twitter, among other companies in the overwhelmingly liberal Bay Area, never really expected Trump to win.

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The key to Mueller's investigation of TrumpSalonThe Trump campaign's digital operations were overseen by Kushner. Now corroborating details are emerging. Facebook disclosed that Russian entitites had bought more than 3,000 politically charged ads estimated at $150,000 on its platform during key ...

Russia Uses Its Oil Giant, Rosneft, as a Foreign Policy ToolNew York TimesThe company, which Russia has long relied on to finance its government and social programs, has been pushing deeply into politically sensitive countries like Cuba, China, Egypt and Vietnam, as well as tumultuous places where American interests are at ...

Jared Kushner is facing enough legal trouble on the federal level that various pundits have mentioned his name as being among those who could be arrested tomorrow in relation to Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. That in turn has led to the question of whether Trump would try to pardon his son-in-law Kushner, in order to keep Kushner from cutting a deal against him. However, if that is Donald’s plan, a big monkey wrench has just been thrown into it.
Let’s hypothetically say that Jared Kushner is arrested tomorrow or in a later round of Trump Russia arrests on federal charges related to his secret meetings with the Russians during the campaign and transition period, and his subsequent failure to disclose those meetings on his White House security clearance forms. Let’s further say that Kushner then decides not to cut a deal, on the premise that Trump will pardon him anyway. The trouble: Kushner is suddenly facing the possibility of state level charges as well.
The Attorney General of Maryland is now investigating Jared Kushner’s family business for a number of serious alleged violations in the real estate field (link). That doesn’t mean that Kushner or anyone in his family is guilty. Nor does it mean that charges will be brought. But these investigations tend to lead to charges more often than not. If Kushner is hypothetically charged with state level crimes, Donald Trump can’t pardon those.
This could result in a situation where even if Donald Trump pardons Jared Kushner on all Russia-related federal charges, Kushner could still be facing potential jail time in Maryland and Trump wouldn’t be able to get him off the hook for that. In the interest of the greater good, Maryland could offer to let Kushner off the hook if he flips on Trump on the federal level. It’s unclear if Special Counsel Robert Mueller is involved in the Maryland probe into Kushner.
The post Here come those state-level charges against Jared Kushner that Donald Trump can’t pardon appeared first on Palmer Report.

Reviews

Reviews

The statistical effects of the October 28 Letter | Federal Bureau of Investigation - NYT

"Many good questions could and should al-zo be asked when Mr. Comey testifies in the closed session of the House Intelligence Committee next week... Comey's overall "motivations" might be complex and and at the same time simple: the security of the country. The details of these complexities are not easy to read..." - by Michael Novakhov - 4.25.17

Gangs, Intelligence Services, and Politics

M.N.: It would be unforgivably naive to suppose that the U.S. criminal Underworld is not controlled these days by the Russian Mafia, and, in turn, by the Russian Intelligence Services. It would also be unforgivably naive to suppose that there are no messages contained in the various criminal acts, and that there are no connections between the Underworld's recent operations and the present situation in the U.S., including the present investigations. As a matter of facts and the investigative leads, they might hold and provide the most easily accessible clues. Attention, the FBI and the significant others: do access these clues.

Smoke and Fire: The Trumputkins, the Trumpumpkins, "The Tillerson Ultimatum", and bad, bad Assad

By Michael Novakhov: So, the Trump - Putin mysterious marriage is on the rocks... The unresolved issues, whatever, whoever, and however triggers the attention to them and their discussions, have to be resolved: soundly, timely, fundamentally, and the long-term; otherwise they come back and accumulate, and together with the other unresolved issues, snowball and cause the avalanches. Nobody needs this mess, enough snow jobs everywhere... That's what Mishustin thinks...

"If you really want to fight ISIS, look into its origins and essence first." - Fight Against "ISIS"

In the opinion of the great many observers, those "sham" groups are nothing more than the creations and proxies of the Russian Military Intelligence (GRU), formed on the basis of the coalitions of the disaffected ex- Baathist Saddam's military (and first of all, military intelligence officers, historically tied with the GRU), with the "rebels-for-hire", and the Assad's Syrian Intelligence Services, which are also the proxies of the GRU.

"Trumpism" as the "social-political experiment" and the "Gang of Four"

The engineered election of Donald Trump as the U.S. President is the joint operation of the German, Russian, and Israeli Intelligence Services with the major executive and operational role played by the Russian-Jewish Mafia at the head of the International Organized Crime - by Michael Novakhov

Tillerson's Complaint:

"Lavrov won't dance with me..."

Lavrov's Response:

"My mama done tol' me... A man's a two-face..."

Vovchick "The Tarantula", why were you so "loud"?!

For Russia (or any other state), this extraordinary, unusual, demonstrative, primitive, blatant "loudness" was like digging her own grave with regard to the US - Russian relations, especially at the time when their improvement and the relief of sanctions is so desired by them, and no doubts, they would understand this very well. This peculiarity in this affair points to the possible deliberate set-up from the third party... The US - Russia - Germany triangle and the role of the revived German intelligence in it after the WW2 have to be examined under the most powerful microscope, in all their hidden details, and in the historical perspective.

Mike Nova's Shared NewsLinks Review

Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks

Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks

Howl!

The America of my dreams: Shattered. Raped.

The King Trump - by Michael Novakhov

The public prayers for His Majesty's health, wealth, and well-being, and also for the development of his additional intellectual capacities should be held no less than three times a day in all public squares, government offices, courthouses, and the places of worship, and also in all the private and public toilets, with the benefit of generating the taxable and multiple extra-flushes. Hopefully, it will flush out in due time.

The Information Age

All the relevant information at your fingertips: Information is not a commodity for sale but one of the most vital and important inalienable rights. To paraphrase Descartes: "I have access to information therefore I am". ("Information Age" - post of 11.30-21.13 | Image from: Information - Google Images)